China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Hakkasan dishes out elegant Chinese cuisine in Shanghai
Shanghai’s Hakkasan is a relative newcomer to the city’s competitive dining scene, but it enjoys a big boost from a corporate parent that knows how to deliver an elegant experience,
At first glance, Hakkasan seems like what many of my Chinese friends would dismiss as “Chinese food for foreigners”. It’s a global chain that began in London in 2001, with Michelin-starred locations around the world. It’s nestled in the glitzy Bund, a fine-dining magnet for tourists and affluent Chinese. Dishes like “salad of Australian Wagyu rib-eye beef with black truffle” and “Sesame prawn toast with foie gras” leap off the first page of the menu.
But when I visit the popular restaurant in Shanghai with local friends, they find a lot to like. The menu, created by the Hakkasan Group’s much-lauded head chef Tong Chee Hwee, boasts “a strong Chinese identity” and a reverence for local ingredients rather than a pure underpinning of traditionalism.
The result here— and at the group’s Michelin-starred hub in London— is beautifully presented dishes steeped in Cantonese tradition if not completely wedded to it.
These include signature dishes offered globally — such as the show-stopping roasted silver cod with champagne and honey— as well as specialties tailored to Chinese mainland tastes. The premium dim sum platter includes scallop siew mai ( shao mai in Mandarin), har gau, chive dumpling and roast-duck mushroom. Shanghai house specialties include whole braised abalone in oyster sauce, stewed sea cucumber in abalone gravy and braised superior bird’s nest in yellow broth with fresh crabmeat.
Our favorite dishes included pork ribs smoked with jasmine tea, a stir-fried lobster with baby bamboo in spicy black-bean sauce, an aspara-gus-vegetarian stirfry in Sichuan sauce, and a sanpei chicken claypot with sweet basil, chili and spring onion.
The Shanghai restaurant recently celebrated its third birthday, and chefTong flewin to help make it a special occasion. Tong’s anniversary menu included several dishes that will linger through the springsummer season, including a delicious boiled chicken soup.
The idea of drinking boiling soup in summer is as deeply rooted in Cantonese culture as chilled gazpacho is in Spain. The logic: The intake of fluids replenishes what you sweat out. For Tong, the trick is to give the soup the appeal of ice cream or frozen yogurt. First he boils the soup for eight hours, then simmers it for another four. He serves the rich result in a hollowed aromatic coconut — a Thailand variety that is more juicy and fragrant than the common type, with fishmaw, yam, wolfberry, lotus seed and ham. Its savory-sweet taste makes it more like a lukewarm dessert than a soup course.
Like all Hakkasan restaurants, the Shanghai outlet boasts an elegant yet comfortable decor with Chinese-red highlights. The main dining room is defined by lattice woodwork that makes the space intimate, and if that’s not cozy enough, there are five luxe private dining rooms on the periphery. There is an acclaimed wine cellar, and smart mixology helmed by British cocktail guru Matthew Hall, who goes far beyond dropping a Sichuan pepper into the odd drink and declaring it Chinese. His Shanghai-only specialties include a durian martini, the Laurel Tching (Four Pillars Rare gin, cardamom-infused vermouth, cherry liqueur, orange and lemon) and the Mayhai Dragon (Ketel vodka, litchi, dragon fruit, lime, jasmine and peach bitters).
Hakkasan Group is a rapidly expanding international hospitality company with outlets in North America, Europe and Asia, including 11 Hakkasan restaurants and several other brands including Ling Ling, HKK and Sake No Hana. Its most recently announced expansion plan: Adeal to open five restaurants in Saudi Arabia in the next five years.
Many of the company’s North American venues are in Las Vegas, where it’s developed a sense of showmanship that has spawned nightclubs and other entertainment venues beyond restaurants. In Shanghai, the food is the show, and once you make your reservation, you’re on the clock: Late arrivals will find their tables given away if more than 15 minutes late, and you meal will be paced— in a very polite and polished way— to finish within two hours, to make room for the next reservation. The show, as they say, must go on.